0.0. UK – see below for events
relating specifically to other countries.

1/7/2015, Average annual fees for UK boarding schools were
£30,369. Fees have outpaced UK inflation every year since 1990, pricing out
many middle class UK parents. Overseas pupils now comprise 38% of the total,
the largest groups from overseas being Chinese (21%), Hong Kong (17.6%) and Russian
(10.3%).

25/1/1996, In the UK, the results of the first National School
Tests sat in May 1995 showed that over
50% of 11-year-olds failed to reach expected standards in English and Maths.

22/3/1990. Teacher’s Unions said teachers in Britain were over-burdened with paperwork.

8/2/1961, The BBC dropped its radio programme Children’s
Hour because TV had cut its
audiences.

10/12/1959.In
Britain, the Crowther report recommended raising the school leaving age to 16.
Meanwhile in Portugal schooling was
only compulsory up to age 11. Only 7% of older Portuguese children went on to
secondary school, and a further 13% to trade schools.

31/1/1956, A A Milne, English author of children’s books,
including Winnie the Pooh, died in Hartfield, Sussex.

17/2/1944, In the UK, the
Education Bill was published, raising the school leaving age to 15.
Also, free secondary education was provided for all children up to age 15,
divided into grammar schools, technical schools and secondary modern schools,
selection for these by an 11-plus examination. Primary education was divided
into infant and junior schools. Schools would provide free milk, subsidised
meals, and free dental and medical examinations. There
was provision for raising the school leaving age to 16; this was implemented in
1973.

12/2/1943,Lord Nuffield set up the Nuffield Foundation with a gift of £10 million.

30/12/1938, The Spens
Committee, in a report to the Board of education, advocated raising the school
leaving age to 16.

31/7/1936, In Britain, the Education Act raised the school leaving age from 14 to
15. However this provision was not implemented until 1944.

12/2/1932, In Britain, a Bill was introduced in Parliament to ban the whipping of children aged under 14.

21/1/1931,A
Bill to raise the UK school leaving age to 15 was defeated in the Commons.

30/3/1925, Rudolf Steiner, Austrian educator who founded
the Anthroposophical Society, died aged 64.

13/3/1918, In Britain, it was
announced that the minimum school leaving age was to be raised to 14, from 13; this measure was implemented in December 1918 under
the Education Act.

2/2/1914, The Cub
Scouts were founded at Robertsbridge, Sussex.

12/3/1912,The Girl
Guide movement was founded in America by Juliette Gordon Low.

4/4/1911, The Duke of Marlborough and other former
pupils at Eton opposed the abolition of birching at the school.

31/5/1910. Lord Baden Powell’s sister, Agnes, announced
the formation of the Girl Guides.

8/2/1910.W Boyce founded the Boy Scout movement in America.

4/9/1909. The first Boy
Scout rally took place at Crystal Palace, south London. The Boy Scout movement was
begun in 1908 by Baden Powell; he set up a Scout camp for 20 boys on Brownsea
Island in 1908. In 1910 the Scout movement spread to the USA, and became so
successful that in 1911 Baden-Powell left the
army to develop it; the Scout movement received a Royal Charter in 1912.

17/2/1909.A Royal
Commission on Britain’s Poor Laws said no more children should live in
workhouses. In urban areas, up to a third of older people also died in Poor
Law institutions, which included children’s homes, infirmaries and lunatic
asylums as well as workhouses.

8/10/1908. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame’s children’s
book, was published. It was still in print in 2001.

4/3/1908.The whip was banned as a means of corporal
punishment in US schools.

26/1/1908, The first
Boy Scout troop was registered, in Glasgow.

16/1/1908. The first issue of Scouting For Boys, Baden-Powell’s fortnightly journal of the
scouting movement, was published.

25/7/1907. Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s experimental camp,
to test the feasibility of scouting,
was set up on Brownsea Island, near Poole; 20 boys attended. The Boy Scout’s association was created
on 29/7/1909.The camp closed for the
winter on 9/8/1907.

1906, Sport became part of the
national curriculum in Britain.

15/7/1906,A Commons Commission
recommended providing school meals,
and a separate Ministry for Wales.

19/9/1905,Doctor
Thomas Barnardo, who set up over 112 homes for deprived children
from 1867, died aged 60.

9/2/1905, In Britain, the Board of
Education called for greater thrift amongst schoolchildren.

1903, The ‘Common
Entrance’ examination was established, to regulate the acceptance of boys into
‘publc schools. A Common Entrance exam for girls was set up in 1947.

2/5/1903. The US paediatrician, Dr Benjamin Spock, was born in New Haven, Connecticut.

8/8/1902, The British
Academy, London, was granted a Royal Charter.

23/3/1902, Major reform of schools in England and Wales. The Education
Act. County Councils and large urban authorities took over responsibility
for education from several thousand school boards and managers of voluntary
schools. However non-conformist churches objected to the use of public money to
finance Anglican
and Catholic schools, which still retained considerable autonomy in
their curricula.

25/8/1900.The German philosopher, Friedrich
Nietzsche, died after 12 years of insanity, caused by syphilis..

30/12/1899, In Britain the
school leaving age was raised from eleven to twelve (excepting children
employed in agriculture); in 1893 it had been raised
from ten to eleven.

1893, In the UK, the Elementary Education (Blind and Deaf Children) Act
empowered local authorities to provide education for blind and deaf children
aged 7 – 16.

8/1891, In Britain, fees for
elementary education were abolished.

1884, St Pauls School, London,
moved from St Pauls Cathedral to West Kensington.

15/10/1881, Marie Stopes, scientist and education
reformer, was born in Edinburgh.

1880, In Britain the
Education Act made school attendance compulsory for children aged 5 to 10.

31/8/1870, Maria Montessori, who developed the Montessori system
for teaching children, was born.

9/7/1870. The Elementary Education Act was passed in
the UK, giving compulsory free education
to every child in England and Wales.

1868, The Public Schools Act improved the
Governing Bodies of these schools. It also extinguished the rights of certain
local farmers and tradesmen to have their sons educated for free at Harrow,
Rugby and Shrewsbury Schools.

27/10/1854,
Sir William Smith, Scottish founder of the Boys
Brigade movement in Glasgow in 1883, was born.

6/9/1852. The first free public lending library opened
in Manchester.

21/6/1852, Friedrich Froebel, German educationalist who founded the Kindergarten system in 1837 at
Blankenberg, died.

4/7/1845. Thomas John Barnardo was born
in Dublin.
In 1867 he started homes for some of London’s many destitute children. They
became known as Dr Barnardo’s Homes although he never qualified as a medical
doctor.

14/2/1845, Quintin Hogg, founder
of polytechnics, was born.

See also Morals & Punishment for measures to protect
children from labour exploitation and educate them

21/12/1844.Changes
in the law now meant no-one under 18 years of age could work over 12 hours a
day, and it was proposed to limit teenagers to a 10 hour day. Children under 13
were restricted to a 48 hour week and had to attend school for 2 hours a week.

10/8/1842. The Mines Act was passed in
the UK forbidding women and children to work underground.

1840, In Britain, the Grammar School Act gave powers to the Court of Chancery to amend
the statutes of these schools, adapting them to contemporary needs.

7/8/1840.The UK Parliament passed an Act forbidding
the employment of children as chimney sweeps. In 1840 only 1 in 5 of London children had any type of schooling, and most
of the rest were working up to 80 hours a week. Chimney sweeping was very
unhealthy; sometimes the boys got stuck, their knees and elbows got raw and
infected and later they got cancer from the soot. Lord Shaftesbury campaigned
against Victorian child labour and got the Climbing-Boy
Bill passed as law in 1840. It decreed that no apprentice could be under 16. However this was not enforced
until the Shaftesbury Act of 1875.

29/8/1833,The Factory Act was passed in the UK. This
applied only to the textile industry,
but was the forerunner of many working practice reforms. The Act forbade the employment of children under nine, and children
under 13 were to have two hours of schooling a day.

1828, The Reverend Thomas Arnold became
headmaster at Rugby School. He began a process of reform, introducing prefects,
the ideal of ‘Christian
Duty’, and a more rigourous intellectual atmosphere. Other public schools soon
adopted these principles.

10/10/1818. The first
reference to school exam marks was made, by Dr Samuel Butler, the Headmaster
of Shrewsbury School.

5/4/1811, Robert Raikes, founder of the Sunday
School movement, died.

16/5/1804, Elizabeth Peabody, kindergarten pioneer, was born.

12/2/1804, Immanuel Kant, German philosopher,
died in Konigsberg.

4/2/1802, Mark Hopkins, US philosopher, was born in
Stocknbridge, Massachusetts.

19/1/1798, Auguste Comte, French philosopher
and founder of modern sociology, was born in Montpellier.

1796, William Pitt, British Prime
Minister, proposed extending the system of Industrial Schools for pauper
children to all children working in industry, but this was not implemented.

4/12/1795, Birth of Thomas Carlyle,
Scottish historian.

16/1/1794, Edward Gibbon, English historian
and author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, died.

1798, Attendance at Sunday
Schools across Britain was now over 300,000.

1784, The first Sunday
School opened in London.

21/4/1782, Friedrich Froebel, German educational pioneer who established the
first Kindegartens, was born in
Oberweissbach.

1780, Robert Raikes opened three Sunday Schools in Gloucestershire. Sunday
Schools then spread to other counties.

18/1/1779, Peter Mark Roget, author of Roget’s Thesaurus, was born.

30/5/1778. The writer and philosopherVoltaire died aged
84. His real name was Francois Marie
Arouet.

15/2/1748,Jeremy Bentham was born. He developed the philosophical doctrine of Utilitarianism.

14/9/1735,Robert Raikes, who founded the Sunday
School system in 1780, was born in Gloucester, son of a printer.

22/4/1724, Immanuel Kant, German philosopher,
was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, the son of a saddler.

5/1714, In Britain, under the Schsim Act, no person was allowed to
run a school except a member of the Anglican Church.

21/11/1694, Voltaire, French philosopher
and writer, was born in Paris as Jean
Francois-Marie Arouet.

19/8/1662, Blaise Pascal, French philosopher
and mathematician, inventor of the first
digital calculator, died in Paris.

15/7/1662, The Royal
Society received a royal charter.

1/4/1662, King Charles II of Britain granted Royal
Patronage to the Royal Society of
London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge. The group of scientists
andnaturalists had been meeting since
1645.

30/6/1660, William Oughtred, English mathematician who
invented the slide rule in 1622,
died in Albury, Surrey.

29/8/1632,John Locke, philosopher,
was born.

4/4/1617, The mathematician John Napier died, at Merchiston
Castle, Edinburgh.He was the first to
publish logarithm tables, in 1614.

3/10/1614, Charterhouse School, London, opened.

31/3/1596, Rene Descartes, French philosopher,
was born.

1/7/1589, Christopher Plantin, printer, died.

5/4/1588, Thomas Hobbes, philosopher,
was born.

1584, Uppingham public school, Rutland, was founded.

10/4/1583, Hugo Grotius, (De Groot)
jurist, was born.

5/3/1575,William Oughtred, mathematician and inventor
of the slide rule, was born at Eton.

1571, Harrow School was founded under a Charter granted to John Lyon,
yeoman of Preston, by Queen Elizabeth I.

1567, Rugby School, Warwickshire, was founded.

12/7/1536, Desiderus Erasmus, Renaissance philosopher, died.

1552, Christs
Hospital School was founded, in Newgate Street, London. It moved to
Horsham, Susses, in 1902.

16/9/1519, Death of John Colet,
who founded the modern St Pauls School.

6/2/1515, Death of Aldus Manutius, the first publisher of
paperbacks and inventor of italics.

6/12/1774. Austria introduced the world’s
first state education system.

0.2. China

1905,
The rigid system of examinations based on knowledge of classic Confucianism,
giving access to jobs in the Chinese civil service was replaced by a
modernised system based on a wider curriculum, The old system had become
increasingly corrupt during the 19th century.

0.3 France

14/5/1968, French workers called a one-day strike to support
the students. The French Franc plummeted.

1877, Education became compulsory for Italian
children aged 6 to 9. However this law was often not enforced through poor
administration.

0.6 Japan

8/1872, The Japanese Meiji Government made
school education compulsory.

5/1869, Japan’s first public elementary
school opened, in Kyoto

0.7 Poland

13/10/1973, The Polish Sejm (Parliament) passed a Bill adopting a
national system of education, 11 years from ages 7 to 18, 3 years primary, 5
years secondary, and 3 years specialised secondary for certain careers.

0.8
Switzerland

29/9/1908.In Switzerland,
the international conference on worker’s rights banned night shifts for children under 14.

0.9 USA

5/9/1911, The first
adult literacy school in the United States began, when Cora Wilson Stewart, school
superintendent for Rowan County, Kentucky, began what she called the Moonlight
Schools. The night classes at the county's 50 schools took place so long as the
Moon was bright enough for students to safely travel. She had expected that 150
might come; however, 1,200 signed up.

20/10/1859, John Dewey,
US educator, was born in Burlington, Vermont.

24/4/1800, US President John Adams approved the spending of
US$5,000 to set up a Library of Congress. This library was established on
Capitol Hill, and is now the largest library in the world.

1786, The first Sunday School in America opened.

1647, The Massachusetts Bay
Colony established publicly finded schools, paid for by a tax on dwellings.
This was to ensure that Puritan children learned Bible virtues.

1635, The Boston Public Latin School was founded; the first
secondary school in the American colonies.